Croissants

A laminated dough folded three times with long chilled rests, where everything depends on the butter staying solid and separate.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter), dairy (milk).

Ingredients

For the dough

• 500 g strong white flour
• 60 g caster sugar
• 12 g salt
• 10 g fast-action yeast
• 140 ml cold milk
• 140 ml cold water
• 50 g soft butter

For the lamination

• 280 g cold unsalted butter, a firm one

To finish

• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon milk

Method

1. THE BUTTER MUST STAY SOLID AND IN A SHEET THROUGHOUT. Lamination is layers of butter between layers of dough; butter that warms and merges into the dough gives bread, not croissants. If at ANY point the dough feels soft or butter shows through, stop and put it in the fridge for thirty minutes. There is no stage at which hurrying helps.
2. THE BUTTER AND DOUGH MUST BE THE SAME FIRMNESS when they meet. Butter harder than the dough shatters into pieces; softer and it squeezes out at the edges. Beaten into a sheet and chilled, it should bend without cracking -- about the firmness of modelling clay.
3. THREE FOLDS AND NO MORE. Three single folds give 27 layers of butter, which is right. More folds make the layers so thin they merge, and the result is oddly dense -- a fault that looks like under-proving and is not.
4. Dough: flour, sugar, salt, yeast, cold milk, cold water and the soft butter mixed and kneaded 5 minutes only. It should be smooth but not elastic. Shaped into a rectangle, wrapped, chilled 2 hours.
5. Butter beaten between two sheets of paper with a rolling pin into a 20 cm square. Chilled 30 minutes.
6. The dough rolled to a 40 by 20 cm rectangle. The butter square laid on one half and the other folded over it, edges sealed by pressing.
7. FIRST FOLD: rolled out to 60 by 20 cm, then folded in three like a letter. Wrapped and chilled 1 HOUR.
8. SECOND FOLD: the same, turned 90 degrees first. Chilled 1 hour.
9. THIRD FOLD: the same again. Chilled at least 2 hours, and overnight is better.
10. Rolled to 3 to 4 mm thick and cut into long triangles about 10 cm at the base.
11. Each stretched gently by the tip, then rolled up from the base, with the tip tucked UNDER so it does not lift in the oven.
12. Proved at warm room temperature, not above 25C, for 2 to 3 hours until visibly puffy and wobbling when the tray is nudged. TOO WARM AND THE BUTTER MELTS OUT before baking, which is the commonest disaster.
13. Glazed carefully, avoiding the cut layers at the ends, and baked at 200C for 18 to 20 minutes until deep brown. Pale croissants are underbaked and taste of raw flour.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes